David Little: We've seen this story before

It's hard to hide from history, but only if somebody remembers it. An old guy with a halfway decent memory and access to a newspaper's clip file is a dangerous thing.

As the Saturday farmers market in downtown Chico tries to make the Second Street parking lot its permanent home, history shows attempts to resolve the problem — or prevent it from becoming a problem in the first place.

An Enterprise-Record story from Feb. 20, 1991, was headlined "Farmers market gets OK to move to downtown lot."

The City Council voted to allow the market to move from a private parking lot at East Fifth and Orient streets to the city-owned lot on Second Street. One council member, Mark Francis, tried to sound a warning. He said allowing the market to use the city-owned lot would set a "dangerous precedent" that would force the city to go along with future private enterprises wishing to operate on city property.

"I've always been opposed to such uses on city property, and I'm still opposed to it," Francis said at the time, looking positively prescient.

Francis also challenged the assertion that downtown businesses would face no competitive threat. He was right on that count, too. The market morphed from selling fresh fruit and vegetables to a market that now sells breakfast, lunch, coffee, bakery items and crafts, directly competing with existing downtown businesses.

Obviously, residents love the open-air market. But many downtown merchants, who have to pay rent and business fees and then lose customer parking to the market, have come to resent the market. Francis was right.

As the market has grown, we've written for years on the opinion page that it should be moved to the city hall lot on Fourth Street, just two blocks away. In 2002, the City Council agreed with us.

In a rare unanimous vote, a disparate council composed of Steve Bertagna, Coleen Jarvis, Rick Keene, Maureen Kirk, Dan Nguyen-Tan, Larry Wahl and Dan Herbert voted to move the market to the other city lot. The council also voted to make the restrooms in the City Council Chambers available to market patrons and vendors during the market hours.

After the latest wrangling late last month over the market's request for permanent restrooms and a long-term lease on the Second Street lot, we mentioned the city hall solution once again — and current Councilor Mark Sorensen reminded us of that decision from 13 years ago.

Why did the council back away from that 7-0 vote to move?

Well, one reason for finding a new home for the market was to help solve the downtown parking problem, which was more pronounced at the time because downtown was bustling, along with the economy.

The city wanted to build a parking structure on the Second Street lot and doubled parking meter fees to do so. Nguyen-Tan, talking about the parking structure in an article on Dec. 3, 2003, said: "Why limit ourselves to four floors? Why not five or six?"

People could live with the farmers market moving two blocks, but too many people didn't want a four-story parking structure there instead. There was a referendum. Thousands of signatures were gathered. The council backed off on the structure and moving the market, too. The council was scared to do anything.

In a story on Aug. 17, 2005, the council voted to spend $150,000 on a workshop — they were called "charrettes," and they were all the rage at the time — to address, the story said, "whether a parking structure is needed, what to do with the Saturday farmers market and growth issues related to the downtown, like density and the configuration of retail and residential uses."

The city paid $150,000 and apparently learned it shouldn't do a darn thing.

So here we are, 22 years after Mark Francis warned of problems, 11 years after the council voted to move the market, still trying to figure out what to do.

David Little is editor of the Enterprise-Record. His column appears each Sunday. Follow him on Twitter, @ER_DavidLittle.